Seme Customs generate over N1bn, makes 120 seizures

October 17th, 2018

From Anthony Nwachukwu, Lagos

The Seme Area Command of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) generated the sum of N1.05 billion for August and September, 2018, while its anti-smuggling unit made 120 seizures, with a Duty Paid Value (DPV) of N95. 07 million within the period.

Three suspects were arrested in connection with some of the seizures, which included 14 exotic vehicles, among them BMW 5 series, Toyota Venza, Mercedes Benz ML 350 and Lexus RX 300, with a DPV of over N70 million, according to a statement by the Command Public Relations Officer, Saidu Nurudeen Abdullahi.

Commenting on the revenue figure, Compt. Mohammed Uba Garba said the command was re-strategising by deploying a proactive anti-smuggling approach to

enforce government’s policies and boost revenue.

He charged officers to strictly adhere to procedures to enable the command achieve its core mandates of raising revenue, suppressing smuggling and facilitating legitimate trade along the Lagos-Abidjan corridor.

Meanwhile, Mohammed, who also received the visiting team from the Customs Headquarters to sensitise

officers on the abuse of social media, led by DCG Enforcement, Inspection and Investigation, expressed dismay at officers’ flagrant abuse and unprofessional dissemination of official information through the social media.

Pledging to stamp out the menace at the command, Mohammed, who also heads the Joint Border Security Meeting (JBSM), tasked all relevant border security agencies on the need to

comply with the Presidential directive on Ease of Doing Business and strict adherence to the ECOWAS protocol of eliminating trade barriers along the Lagos-Abidjan corridor.

To that end, he disclosed that an ad-hoc joint taskforce from JBSM platform, to be headed by the Commanding Officer 243 Battalion, was being set up as some internal monitoring mechanism against the proliferation of checkpoints along the corridor.